Cardinal Dolan takes on Donald Trump on immigration

Tuesday, August 4th, 2015

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York has hit out at US presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s comments on immigration.

In an op-ed piece for the New York Daily News, Cardinal Dolan likened Mr Trump’s views to a “virulent strain” of American “nativism”.

“Nativists believed the immigrant to be dangerous, and that America was better off without them,” the cardinal wrote.

Cardinal Dolan recalled how, before becoming a bishop, he taught American religious history to university students, dedicating a portion of the class to “the ugly phenomenon called nativism”.

Cardinal Dolan described nativism with the same words as scholar and author Ray Allen Billington, calling it “organised, white, Protestant antagonism toward the Catholic immigrant”.

He said that he is not telling anyone who they should vote for.

But he stressed that as a Catholic “I take seriously the Bible’s teaching that we are to welcome the stranger, one of the most frequently mentioned moral imperatives in both the Old and New Testament”.

“I wish I were in the college classroom again, so I could roll out my ‘Trump card’ to show the students that I was right. Nativism is alive, well – and apparently popular!”

Trump, in his speech launching his presidential campaign, had said that “the US has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. And these aren’t the best and the finest”.

“When Mexico sends its people they’re not sending their best, they’re sending people that have a lot of problems . . . they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some I assume are good people,” Trump said.

In a June 28 interview with CNN, Trump spoke of making Mexico build a wall along the US – Mexican border, saying that a wall is needed in certain areas.

He said he would force Mexico to build the wall “because we give them a fortune”.

Mr Trump is one of the contenders to be the Republican Party candidate for the presidency.

Sources